Founder Weekly (Issue 705 October 22 2025)

Welcome to issue 705 of Founder Weekly. Let's get straight to the links this week.

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General

Andrej Karpathy — “We’re summoning ghosts, not building animals”

Andrej Karpathy discusses why AGI development will span a decade, arguing that current AI systems lack continual learning, multimodality, and genuine reasoning. He contrasts biological evolution with machine learning, saying that we are creating "digital ghosts" trained on human-generated data rather than animals evolved for survival, and explains how future AI progress will combine practical engineering with deeper cognitive architectures.

Billion-Dollar Unpopular Startup Ideas

The video by Y Combinator discusses contrarian startup bets that seemed crazy at first but succeeded spectacularly, like Uber, Coinbase, DoorDash, and Flock Safety. Founders share how to find unique, underserved opportunities in crowded markets by focusing on real user needs, navigating legal gray areas, and sticking to first principles despite skepticism or competition.

Languaging: The Software of Belief

Pattern-breaking companies install radically different beliefs through language.

Renew Your Co-Founder Vows — and Other Tactics for Strengthening the Most Important Relationship in Your Startup

Executive coach and interpersonal dynamics expert Rachel Lockett shares five practices to strengthen the most important relationship in your startup.

The Moat Problem

What the Best AI Companies Are Building Right Now.

15 Tips for Scaling your Startup’s Hiring Process

The post shares 15 proven strategies for scaling startup hiring without losing quality, from smart recruiter hiring and structured interviews to referral-driven culture. Inspired by D.E. Shaw’s selectivity, it shows how to balance speed with rigor to build high-performing teams at scale.

Why There Hasn't Been a ChatGPT Moment Yet in Manufacturing

The Invisible Kernel War Between the U.S. and China and the Race to Industrial AI.

32 things we’ve learned about building a startup that scales

What growing PostHog from 11 to 150 people taught us about culture, hiring, product, marketing, and more.

Marketing, Sales and PR

A B2B founder’s guide to generating demand from scratch

A playbook of the timeless fundamentals of demand generation, plus how to adapt them for today's AI-driven market.

The odds of making it

A new look inside startup growth from zero to $25 million ARR.

Money and Finance

Why Most VCs Don’t Actually Have Conviction

Everyone in VC says they “invest with conviction.” But let’s be honest, most are just waiting for someone else to believe first. Real conviction means saying yes when it still feels uncomfortable. It means putting your reputation on the line before there’s traction, hype, or social proof. That’s what separates the crowd followers from the fund builders.

Investor Churn: Why Founders Lose Investors Mid-Round (and How to Prevent It)

A deep dive into the psychology and process behind investor disengagement — why momentum fades between meetings, how to build communication systems that prevent it, and the discipline required to keep.